that there were about eight or ten basketball players-not quite the whole team. All of them lived in the same dorm-it was one of the traditional jock dorms on the campus; and because the basketball team was playing at some faraway school, they were on their way to the dining hall for an early breakfast with the waiters who had dining-hall duty. They
were big, happy guys with goofy strides, and they didn't mind being out of bed before it was light-they were going to miss their Saturday morning classes, and they saw the whole day as an adventure. Owen Meany was not quite in such a cheerful mood; he rolled down the window of the big truck's frosty cab and called them over. They were friendly, and-as always-extremely glad to see him, and they jumped onto the flatbed of the trailer and roughhoused with each other, pushing each other off the flatbed, and so forth.
'YOU GUYS LOOK VERY STRONG TODAY,' said Owen Meany, and they hooted in agreement. In the path of the truck's headlights, the innocent shape of Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen Beetle stood encased in ice and dusted very lightly with last night's snow. 'I'LL BET YOU GUYS AREN'T STRONG ENOUGH TO PICK UP THAT VOLKSWAGEN,' said Owen Meany. But, of course, they were strong enough; they were not only strong enough to lift Dr. Dolder's Beetle-they were strong enough to carry it out of town. The captain of the basketball team was an agreeable giant; when Owen practiced the shot with this guy, the captain lifted Owen with one hand.
'No problem,' the captain said to Owen. 'Where do you want it?'
Owen swore to me that it wasn't until that moment that he got THE IDEA. It's clear to me that Owen never overcame his irritation with Randy White for moving morning chapel from Kurd's Church to the Main Academy Building and calling it morning meeting, that he still thought of that as the headmaster's GRANDSTANDING. The sets for Dan's winter-term play had already been dismantled; the stage of The Great Hall, as it was called, was bare. And that broad, sweeping, marble stairway that led up to The Great Hall's triumphant double doors ... all of that, Owen was sure, was big enough to permit the easy entrance of Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen. And wouldn't that be something: to have that perky little automobile parked on center stage-a kind of cheerful, harmless message to greet the headmaster and the entire student body; a little something to make them smile, as the dog days of March bore down upon us and the long-awaited break for spring vacation could not come soon enough to save us all.
'CARRY IT INTO THE MAIN ACADEMY BUILDING,' Owen Meany told the captain of the basketball team. 'TAKE IT UPSTAIRS TO THE GREAT HALL AND CARRY IT UP ON THE STAGE,' said The Voice. 'PUT IT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE, FACING FORWARD-RIGHT NEXT TO THE HEADMASTER'S PODIUM. BUT BE CAREFUL YOU DON'T SCRATCH IT-AND FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T DROP IT! DON'T PUT A MARK ON ANYTHING,' he cautioned the basketball players. 'DON'T DO THE SLIGHTEST DAMAGE-NOT TO THE CAR AND NOT TO THE STAIRS, NOT TO THE DOORS OF THE GREAT HALL, NOT TO THE STAGE,' he said. 'MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT FLEW UP THERE,' he told them. 'MAKE FT LOOK LIKE AN ANGEL DROVE IT ONSTAGE!' said Owen Meany. When the basketball players carried off Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen, Owen thought very carefully about using the available parking space; he decided it was wiser to drive all the way over to Waterhouse Hall and park next to Dan's car, instead. Not even Dan saw him park the truck there; and if anyone had seen him running across the campus, as it was growing light, that would not have seemed strange-he was just a faculty waiter with dining-hall duty, hurrying so he wouldn't be late. He ate his breakfast in the dining-hall kitchen with the other waiters and with an extraordinarily hungry and jolly bunch of basketball players. Owen was setting the head faculty table when the captain of the basketball team said good-bye to him.
'There wasn't the slightest damage-not to anything,' the captain assured him.
'HAVE A GOOD GAME!' said Owen Meany. It was one of the janitors in the Main Academy Building who discovered the Beetle onstage-when he was raising the blinds on the high windows that welcomed so much morning light into The Great Hall. Naturally, the janitor called the headmaster. From the kitchen window of his obtrusive house, directly across from the Main Academy Building, Headmaster White could see the small rectangle of bare ground where Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen had spent the night. According to Dan Needham, the headmaster called him while he was getting out of the shower; most of the faculty made breakfast for themselves at home, or they skipped breakfast rather than eat in the school dining hall. The
headmaster told Dan that he was rounding up all able-bodied faculty for the purpose of removing Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen from the stage of The Great Hall-before morning meeting. The students, the headmaster told Dan, were not going to have 'the last laugh.' Dan said he didn't feel particularly able-bodied himself, but he'd certainly try to help out. When he hung up the phone, he was laughing to himself-until he looked out the window of Waterhouse Hall and saw the Meany Granite Company trailer-truck parked next to his own car. Dan suddenly thought that THE IDEA of putting Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen on the stage of The Great Hall had Owen Meany's name written all over it. That was exactly what the headmaster said, when he and about a dozen, not-very-able-bodied faculty members, along with a few hefty faculty wives, were struggling with Dr. Dolder's Beetle.
'This has Owen Meany's name written all over it!' the headmaster said.
'I don't think Owen could lift a Volkswagen,' Dan Needham ventured cautiously.
'I mean, the ideal' the headmaster said. As Dan describes it, the faculty were ill-trained for lifting anything; even the athletic types were neither as strong nor as flexible as young basketball
